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Besieged IS militants ask for an exit

- By Sarah El Deeb

More than 300 Islamic State fighters are backed into a small area in eastern Syria, refusing to surrender.

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria — More than 300 Islamic State militants surrounded in a tiny area in eastern Syria are refusing to surrender to U.S.-backed forces and are trying to negotiate an exit, Syrian activists and a person close to the negotiatio­ns said Monday.

The extremists are bottled up in the village of Baghouz, where they are hiding among hundreds of civilians and preventing them from leaving. The stalling tactics are likely to further delay a declaratio­n of the end of the IS group’s self-proclaimed caliphate, which the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were hoping to make last week.

A person familiar with the negotiatio­ns said the militants are asking for a corridor to the rebel-held northweste­rn province of Idlib, and demand that they be allowed to leave along with the evacuated civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the talks, which he described as taking place indirectly.

The Britain-based Syrian Observator­y for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors the civil war in Syria, said another request by IS to be evacuated to neighborin­g Iraq was also rejected. IS released 10 SDF fighters it had been holding on Sunday, but it was not clear what, if anything, the extremists would get in return, the Observator­y said.

The speck of land in Syria’s remote eastern desert, near the border with Iraq, is all that remains of a self-styled caliphate that once sprawled across a third of both countries and included several major towns and cities.

In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, the militants are holed up in what SDF officials describe as a small tented village atop a network of tunnels and caves. There are civilians inside as well, possibly including hostages.

The SDF and the U.S.-led coalition have been fighting IS in the surroundin­g region since September. They and other forces have steadily driven IS from nearly all the territory it once controlled, in battles that have killed tens of thousands of people and left entire towns and neighborho­ods in ruins.

The DeirEzzor 24, an activist collective in eastern Syria, said several trucks loaded with food entered IS-held areas in Baghouz on Monday. It also reported the release of the SDF fighters, without saying whether there was a quid pro quo.

At least 62 people have died in recent weeks, mainly from exhaustion and malnutriti­on, after making their way out of militant-held territory, the Internatio­nal Rescue Committee said. Spokesman Paul Donohoe said twothirds were children under the age of one. He said they either died along the way or soon after arriving at a camp for the displaced.

Elsewhere in Syria, two bomb blasts went off in the northweste­rn city of Idlib, killing at least 13 people, Syrian opposition activists and paramedics said.

The Observator­y said the blasts in the Qusour neighborho­od during rush hour Monday killed 17 people and wounded about 50. The Edlib Media Center, an activist collective, said the bombings killed 13 and wounded dozens.

 ?? FELIPE DANA/AP ?? A U.S.-backed SDF fighter stands atop a building used as a temporary base near the last land still held by Islamic State militants in Baghouz, Syria, on Monday.
FELIPE DANA/AP A U.S.-backed SDF fighter stands atop a building used as a temporary base near the last land still held by Islamic State militants in Baghouz, Syria, on Monday.

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